The Rail Splitter

A Weekly Briefing Brought To You By The Lincoln Project

Happy Father’s Day to all! Hope you're having a safe and healthy one with you and yours.

Today is the first of our Sunday Briefings—our new newsletter where we’ll lay out what we’re seeing and comment on the issues of the 2020 campaign.

Onto the show...

Donald Trump’s Campaign is Failing and Flailing

There’s a tired, but true, trope in politics: Campaigns are reflections of their candidates.

In the case of President Donald Trump’s campaign — an organization with all the resources and money available, but with a candidate who has no clue how to lead — that reflection is accurate.

Last night, in Tulsa, Trump’s pitiful campaign was on full display. Instead of a raucous rally in front of a packed house, Trump rambled and lied in front of thousands of empty seats. Can't imagine that being good for his fragile ego.

Between the fear of contracting Covid-19, to a clear decline in the president's enthusiasm, only 6,200 people attended, what the president called, his official launch.

Given that the venue holds 19,000, Trump’s “silent majority” may well also be a vocal minority. We’re calling it “The Emptysburgh Address."

Rather than subject you to all the craziness of the evening, here are the low-lights of last night's rally:

Trump spoke for a quarter of an hour reliving his inability to walk down a ramp. His loudest cheer came when he managed the 'Herculean' task of taking a drink. The definition of what it means to be “tough” has changed somewhat.
He admitted that he ordered coronavirus testing slowed because he didn’t like seeing the infection rate increase.
Proved, once again, his allegiance to the Confederacy when he made sure to use words like “heritage” to indicate his true feelings.

So it's no surprise that Fox News released a poll last week showing Joe Biden up 50%-38%.

One can only assume last night’s performance won’t help those sagging numbers as we head into this next cycle.

Falling polls aside, last night was a stunning disaster for Trump’s campaign. Even more stunningly, is know that their cardinal sins were avoidable.

Instead of telling their boss the hard truth, campaign manager, Brad Parscale and Co. would rather double-down and promise Trump the impossible.

They spent hundreds of thousands of dollars building stages they never used.

Instead of telling Trump that the BOK Center only seats 19,000 people, they told him that more than one million people had requested tickets.

And, they didn't monitor ticket sales, so were completely caught off guard when Generation Z took to TikTok and signed up for tickets they never planned to use.

Trump's team set unreachable expectations and then prayed to the rally gods that people would show up. They didn’t.

Getting Out the Vote

If you’re interested in helping out in a swing state—Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin—click this link to fill out our member survey.

We also have a new podcast, Republicans Defeating Trump. It’s available now on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and Spotify.

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